


the sun was going & the world was wrong

by scullyitsme



Category: The X-Files
Genre: Any reason to mention the Lone Gunmen, ECLIPSE FIC, Established Relationship, Fox Mulder Was a Teenage Heartthrob, Gen, I always want a reason to feel sad about Melissa Scully, MSR, Post-Series, Season 11 (?), Unremarkable house, present day
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-21
Updated: 2017-08-21
Packaged: 2018-12-18 08:55:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,300
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11870907
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/scullyitsme/pseuds/scullyitsme
Summary: “What were you doing during the eclipse of ‘79, Scully?”





	the sun was going & the world was wrong

“What were you doing during the eclipse of ‘79, Scully?”

She’d been drowsing next to him in bed for the last quarter hour. He knows she’s almost awake — she snoozed her alarm a few minutes ago. His first words of the day to her come without preamble. He’s like that; picks up the conversation they fell asleep having the night before as though they were never interrupted by, ideally (for her at least), seven hours of rest.

She frowns against her pillow, curled up on her side, angled toward her phone on the nightstand — which, even in sleep, she’s poised to grab and silence. He was awake before it this morning. She can tell by the way his voice is clear and the cool feel of the air. He’s gotten up at least once, let the cocoon of warmth dissipate. His breathing next to her is fully present and waiting. She stretches her eyes open and rolls over onto her back, unsurprised that when she opens them he’s above her, endeared to her.

“When was it?” she mumbled, “1979 – ?” Her eyelids fluttered closed against her still sleep-sallow cheeks. She feels his cool hand brush against her forehead, coaxing her back to him.

A smile tugs at her lips, at how he misses her in sleep; how tangible his disappointment that they have yet to meet in a shared dreamscape.

“I was in high school,” she yawns as he nuzzles the velvety spot behind her ear with the tip of his nose. “It was a few days after my birthday. Bill and I made viewers out of a month’s worth of cereal boxes.”

“You didn’t have eclipse glasses?”

She chuckled, “That would have been too easy.”

“Did it work?”

“Mhm,” she sighed, rolling toward him, tucking her fists beneath her chin and pressing her forehead against his chest. She was slightly disappointed to realize he’d put a tee shirt on at some point. “But I got in trouble because I skipped school to go to Mission Trails Regional Park — which had actually just been finished, I think. I remember the city had a contest to pick the name.”

“And that’s what they picked —?”

She snorted, “Anyway, it was a great spot. The conditions for viewing weren’t ideal, but we could see it.”

“We?”

“I made Missy drive me.”

“Somehow I find it hard to believe you had a hard time convincing her.”

“This was before she got into all the new age stuff,” she stiffened in his arms as the memory returned to her, weighted by her sister’s ghost. “She had something else she wanted to do. Go off with a boyfriend, more than likely. She thought it was just geeky kid sister stuff and . . .I remember her leaning up against the car smoking a cigarette and saying to me, “It’s not like it’s the only chance I’ll ever have to see one, Day.”

He refrained from stating the obvious; that it had been. That youth blinds us to the more unfortunate, but entirely possible, permutations of our lives. 

“I felt like I had to see it,” Scully said softly, turning her face toward him as she spoke, “It felt essential, somehow. I guess maybe I didn’t believe that I’d have another chance. Or maybe I did, but I couldn’t help but think — what if this is the only chance I’ll ever have?”

He kissed the top of her hair, “Was it worth the punishment for truancy?”

She smiled, reaching up to pluck a downy feather from their pillows from his mop of bedraggled hair. “Yeah. It was.”

He leaned down to kiss her, “Wanna relive the delinquent-for-science ways of your younger years today? Wanna call in sick and watch the sun disappear?”

“You can’t look straight at it, Mulder.”

“I know,” he said, giving her a look that she recognized as one worn by a man with a plan. Or, more accurately, a scheme. “I’ve prepared.”

He threw back the covers and turned away from her long enough to dig into the drawer of his bedside table. When he turned back, flopping against the pillows, he brandished two pairs of eclipse glasses.

“Mulder, how much did you pay for those?” she sighed as she sat up, taking one pair from him and inspecting them with her half-asleep, but no less skeptical, gaze. A task which, in the poorly lit bedroom of their farmhouse, reminded her that she really could no longer forgo reading glasses.

“Not one penny. You’ll recall that I have at my disposal purveyors of such semi-occasional gizmos.” 

She blinked, “The Gunmen—?”

He grinned, donning his glasses with a flourish, “Who else? Are they not the Fathers of the Far Out?” 

“I’m tempted to suggest that we not miss work, because part of me supposes that to have seen one total solar eclipse is to have seen them all. . .” Scully began, scooting to the edge of the bed until her legs were dangling over the edge of it. “But I get the sneaking suspicion that your particular brand of helical enthusiasm comes from a place not of reverence or nostalgia — but inexperience.”

She turned to look over her shoulder at him. From behind his paper goggles a blush spread across his cheeks. He grinned — or maybe grimaced, she wasn’t sure — giving her a slight, stalling, heh.

Scully padded around to his side of the bed. Standing before him, she leaned down and plucked the glasses from his face, setting them on the night stand.

“What, pray tell, were you doing during the eclipse of 1979, Mulder?” She folded her arms, raised her eyebrow expectantly, and simply waited.

“Not a matter of what but, uh, who —” he admitted with a slight wince. 

Her eyebrow hiked itself up a bit in intrigue. 

“It was the last semester of my senior year,” he said, “I’d already been accepted to Oxford. I was kind of dating this girl, thought it would be romantic to take her to the bluffs on the Vineyard for the eclipse. We weren’t really on its path, but uh, it didn’t really matter because — you know, we did drive out to the bluffs but we were . . . engaged in a non-astronomical kind of syzygy.”

She smirked, “By definition that would be the alignment of three celestial bodies, not two.”

“Well, her mother was the head of the Edgartown Liturgical Arts Center, so we did try to leave room for Jesus.”

He could feel her roll her eyes even though she’d turned away, toward the connecting bathroom door, as soon as he’d opened his mouth to respond.

“Hey,” he said softly. She paused as she reached the threshold, looking back at him, heavy-lidded with the remnants of sleep and the ever-present heft of love. “I did miss it. The eclipse. But I’m kind of glad I did.”

She sighed, leaning up against the doorjamb, watching as he rose from the bed, grabbing the glasses from the night table as he did. When he was standing in front of her — and above her, as they were both barefoot — he settled them on top of her head, then let his hand come to rest against her cheek, his thumb stroking her earlobe.

“Mary-Lee Skiff was a very nice girl,” he said, “But she wasn’t the woman I’d want beside me when the sun goes out.”

She sighed, looping her arms around his waist. “The light comes back, you know.”

“Well, if it doesn’t, you’re the only person I’d want to watch the world end with, Scully.” He said, resting his chin atop the soft crown of her hair.

They stood there suspended in complete alignment. Having spent half their lives together in places light had forsaken, they were unafraid. They had always, somehow, been able to find each other in the dark.

**Author's Note:**

> The title is from Annie Dillard’s beautiful essay about the total solar eclipse in 1979.


End file.
